Criminal Finances Bill (First sitting)

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

This will have to be the last question. You only have two minutes.

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Q I apologise for being late this morning; I was at another Committee meeting. My question is to Detective Harman. I think you have already tackled funding of terrorism this morning but, as we know, terrorism has no borders nor does the funding, and with technology it becomes increasingly difficult for you to follow the flow of these funds. The Bill proposes more information sharing between the public and private sectors, which you have said will be incredibly helpful. Could you share whether there will be pushback from the banking sector and, as we seize the assets of terrorists, what might they do? What will be their next steps, so we can be ahead of the curve? Can you give us some advice on where they might end up putting their funds, so we can be a position to start seizing those funds once they come out of the mainstream?

Detective Superintendent Harman: It is a big topic. Briefly, our relationship with the financial sector—the banks and the MSBs—is fantastic. We have a very positive relationship. There are some official mechanisms for that such as the JMLT that has been mentioned. So, I do not expect any pushback, quite the opposite really. The banking sector wants to work with us, obviously respecting their client confidentiality and the rules around that, but they do want to work with us, and they do work with us. This really gives a legal gateway for the goodwill, if you like, that already exists. We look forward to working with them as the way people bank changes—becomes more digital and so forth. We will evolve with that; that is our intention.

[The Chair]

That brings us to the end of the allotted time for the Committee to ask questions. I thank the witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their excellent presentations and the queries that they have answered. We will now move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witnesses

Simon York, Mark Thompson and Nick Price gave evidence.